Gizzard Salad - Cold or Hot

Let your giblets [I used just gizzards, hearts and the neck] boil in good broth season’d with a bunch of fine herbs and salt: Then cut them into pieces and fry them in lard [I used Graisse Normande] , with parsly, chervil and a little white pepper: Lastly, having stew’d all with yolks of eggs, a little verjuice and the juice of a lemmon [I used black bean paste to deglaze the pan], dress your pottage upon the soaked crusts [bread soaked in broth--I used couscous from North African cuisine]. The same thing may do also done with the beatils [“small blessed objects” – meaning delicacies like cocks’ combs, lambstones, etc.] or tid-bits of other sorts of fowl.

The court & country cook, faithfully translated out of French into English by J. K. A. J. Churchill, London, 1702, p. 131-2

Cook couscous in broth left from gizzards. When done, arrange in a bowl or platter. Sieve several boiled eggs and arrange on top of couscous around the edges of the bowl. Place gizzards over remaining couscous in the center. Can be eaten cold as salad in Summer, or hot in the Winter.

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Explore with me 18thC French cuisine as a habitante in Nouvelle France may have cooked. After the F&I War, and again after the Revolutionary War, habitantes were surrounded and overrun by Anglo and other American influences. By the end of the 18thC, new foods and new methods of cooking would change her culture forever.